Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. – Albert Einstein
So it has come to this: for a number of years now, it has been literally impossible to live in the United States (and a number of other Western countries) without breaking the law on a regular basis; civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average American commits three felonies every day. Nobody can pinpoint exactly when the goal of universal criminality, long sought by the ruling class, was finally reached; all we can say is that it was sometime during the 20th century, an era which opened with the criminalization of dozens of private, consensual behaviors (ranging from non-marital sex to intoxicant use) and closed with the “tough on crime” laws, “drug war” escalation and discarding of the concept of criminal intent in the 1990s. And though I will continue to speak out against the government’s granting itself new excuses to abduct, torture, rob, cage and enslave people (such as California’s Proposition 35, which if passed will become the model for similar laws in every state), the fact of the matter is that it’s several decades too late; any enterprising prosecutor already has a wide variety of local, state and federal recipes to choose from when deciding exactly how he would like to cook any given goose.
A few years ago, Americans who like to imagine themselves as “the political left” eschewed the traditional label “liberal” in favor of the older term “progressive”; this is especially interesting since the progressive philosophy (which holds that the world should be ruled by experts who are “scientifically” trained to know what’s “best for society” and therefore have the right to impose their will on everyone else “for our own good”) is if anything the exact opposite of classical liberalism (which holds that each person has the right to self-ownership and self-determination). In other words, the shift in nomenclature revealed the truth previous leaders tried to hide under the “liberal” label: the only philosophical difference between the American political parties lies in the fact that soi-disant “conservatives” think the all-powerful ruling elite should be made up of the wealthy and religious authorities, while soi-disant “progressives” think it should be made up of those “educated” for the task in state-controlled systems. In practice, however, there is no difference at all. Both flavors of fascism favor infinite expansion of government power with the ultimate goal of total establishment control of all wealth and every individual; both dole out bread and circuses so as to call attention away from what they’re actually doing. And if you believe the process can be stopped by elections, legislation and all the other trappings of “democracy”, ask yourself why each of the last four presidents simply continued the policies of his predecessor even if his electoral platform stated the exact opposite, and why Congress is completely impotent to control powerful, entrenched bureaucracies like the TSA.
I don’t pretend to know what the endgame for all this is going to be, but I can tell you one thing: it will be neither pretty nor peacefully-resolved. The American government is an immense, blind, idiotic hyper-organism which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of Washington amidst the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes; it acts on instinct alone, and therefore cannot be counted upon to control itself even if its actions can clearly be recognized by rational beings as evil, chaotic and self-destructive. Because of this, no sane and moral person should accept any of those actions as having even the faintest trace of moral authority; in other words, the laws and regulations produced by the American political system no longer reflect sense, morality, the well-being of society, the will of the people or any other recognizable principle of good government, and are therefore not binding on free people. Police, prosecutors and other government actors who enforce such laws are not legitimate authorities, but rather the myriad tentacles of a mad, amorphous abomination flailing about wildly in its delirium and killing or maiming everything with which it comes into contact.
Given these facts, how is a moral person to act? The answer is, by one’s own conscience. Any resemblance between the laws and moral behavior is now purely coincidental; this is not a problem for those of us who have always relied upon our own moral compasses rather than guidance from authority figures, but those whose personal senses of right and wrong have been stunted through reliance upon external dictates will be much slower to adapt. It’s true that, as Voltaire said, “It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong”; however, our government is so totally out of control that even following all the laws one knows of to the letter is no guarantee against destruction. The “law-abiding” citizen is a thing of the past, so it’s better to do what one knows to be right even if it’s illegal, because everyone is constantly in violation of some law anyhow. It’s time for Americans (and all other subjects of repressive states, which means a large fraction of the world) to start practicing what Vaclav Havel called “living in truth”: in other words ignoring the lies and proclamations of tyrants and just living like free people, avoiding all contact with government actors whenever possible. If you’ve never read Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless”, you really ought to; I also highly recommend this recent James L. Payne essay entitled “Civil Noncompliance”, which covers much the same ground but in a much shorter space. Perhaps American fascism will eventually collapse just as Soviet communism did, but in the interim it needs to be thought of as something like a hurricane or earthquake: a mindless, super-powerful destructive force that cannot be controlled, but only avoided.
I’ve been talking about this for quite a while. It’s the capitalist dream come true. When every one is a prisoner, all industry will be prison industry, and all of us slaves. They’re working on it.
Except for the terminological difference, I agree with you; real capitalists want free exchanges, not slaves. What we have here in the US is fascism, not true capitalism, which began to die off in the 19th century and vanished entirely sometime after World War II.
Real capitalists hate big government. The jerks who run corporate America aren’t capitalists; they are greedy and vicious hyenas who are happy to wield the club of government to take what that they have not earned. from those who have.
I agree. Oligarchs are oligarchs, whether the excuse they use for their “right” to rule is birth, wealth, organizational position, education, popularity or anything else.
I’m really glad you pointed out the Havel essay. At times I had to remind myself that he was talking about the Soviet Union and not America! The similarities are eerie……
Even down to chronic overspending and involvement in Afghanistan…
As Havel points out, in the Eastern bloc only the Russians actually had faith in the system. Eventually the growing debt, lower prices for oil exports, a very unpopular war, and the completely inept attempts to cover up the Chernobyl catastrophe caused the Russians to turn against the regime.
I haven’t been hearing a lot about Prop 35. Last poll I saw showed it was very likely to pass, however. Wonder if it will drive the porn industry completely out of the state.
I don’t think there’s really an end game or master plan in the works. What you see is just the system democratically responding to the input from voters. That is, voters in most nations generally appear to prefer the (decreasingly) watered-down version of fascism live under and will put it in place whenever they are given the ability to do so. Sure, they’ll talk a good game about supporting freedom, but once you start questioning people about specifics it becomes clear that the status quo is wildly popular.
Ending the war on drugs? Fringe position. Ending subsidies and bailouts for any businesses? The U.S. incumbent is running (and winning) re-election on his record of subsidizing businesses (“GM is alive!!!”). Let people make their own choices with their money? Both the largest government programs that steal money (i.e., Defense, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid) and regulatory agencies that block you from spending it as you wish (e.g., FDA, EPA) poll higher than the elected officials who implement them.
Freedom on specific issues is often unpopular.
The sad fact is that the median voter of the ‘free’ world, our friends and neighbours by implication, are closet-fascists who are more or less pleased with the status quo police state. And that’s kind of terrifying.
I wasn’t really using “endgame” in that sense; perhaps I should’ve used a different phrase. As I explained (and Payne covers at greater length), the process of government is a blind, mad, amorphous one with no actual long-term plan; it will go on thus until it is destroyed. What I meant by “endgame” is just that: how will we get from here to the government’s inevitable collapse? Will it be a violent revolution? A slow collapse like that of Soviet communism? An economic debacle? A period of aggressive empire-building funneling the wealth of other nations to North America, eventually resulting in collapse after barbarian invasions? Interesting times, indeed.
The government is essentially a machine out of control. So, eventually, it will crash. There’s no avoiding this and no real way for anyone to affect the path it will take or the lives it will destroy in the process.
The important question is, how will we individuals come out of this with our skins and our consciences intact? Most people will not choose my route: I’m an unperson. But I can’t think of any other choice that does not make one an aider and abettor to government evil.
Ah, I see.
Since the trajectory of the US seems to be to (largely) retain functional democracy while increasingly strangling both economic and civil liberties, my guess would be some kind of fiscal collapse. The economy will stop growing under the increasing burden of the state and the insatiable demand for more free stuff from the government will outpace what either the economy or creditors can or will support. When the state can no longer support itself credibly, it will have the choice between backing away from the edge and returning to some semblance of a limited mandate, or it will follow the example of earlier regimes and chase the dream of an all-powerful state off an existential cliff.
I think a popular revolution is least likely since, as I said, the status quo is if anything less oppressive than what voters demand. If there’s a revolution it would have to be a handful of outliers working to suppress the scope (but not the existence) of democracy.
America is already essentially bankrupt but uses all sorts of tricks to hide this fact. By the time it’s impossible to hide its bankruptcy, America will be too deep into its economic hole for any action to make a difference.
What’s worse is that, unlike the time of the Great Depression, Americans have become dependent on the government doing for them what they should be doing for themselves. They don’t know how to live as independent individuals. When the economy drops into the cesspool, the country will be filled with hordes of people who can do nothing but bleat for help–help which will not be forthcoming. Then they will become starving hordes. Starving people are not known for adopting rational solutions……
Very much bankrupt. Today’s 20 somethings just aren’t ever going to be able to pay for the outsized retirements their parents expect. Boomers are so greedy and so innumerate that they are doomed to be disappointed.
It may sound odd, but from my extra-territorial perch north of the 49th, what I see in your assessment–and to a lesser extent what I see via various news sources–makes me think of the fictional society of Haven in the early books of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. Massive debt, massive handouts, an hereditary presidency and cabinet, a shredded/ignored constitution, vicious security apparatus, entrenched corporatism, and so on. The method by which the society sustained itself was through military growth-by-conquest and refilling state coffers by pillage. It’s not hard to see something similar as being possible (though perhaps not probable) in this scenario, before arriving at violent insurrection led by like-minded people tired of the excess of Privilege.
One hopes that both in America and abroad (in similar countries like mine) that democracy isn’t completely subverted, and that people interested in reducing the size, impact, and influence of government can gain momentum and prevent societal collapse and destruction. For myself I’m not quite ready to give up hope, even in the face of some of the stupidest laws ever having been recently passed and brought into force in my province.
I don’t see democracy as a solution to problems of overgrown government. Those in power are experts at fooling the people, or they would be resisted and would constantly have to fight the public. And most people are simply too lazy to look beyond the “obvious” answers they see on the drive-by media.
In all probability, both the US and Europe will continue to become more fascist. The freest country of the next few decades will be some small country that realizes the US government is simply too broke to follow through on its threats against (for instance) any country that abandons the War on Drugs. Once this bluff is called, the game will be over. But will the US be resilient enough to reform itself afterward and join the good guys? I doubt it.
The change began, I believe, when the Constitution began to be read in an inverted fashion. Originally, it was a statement of what the government had the authority to do; anything not specifically listed as within the government’s authority wasn’t permitted. As society (and technology) advanced, leaders started to eschew the long, difficult path to expand government authority and took a shortcut; anything the Constitution didn’t forbid the government to do was permissable. Although originally done for good reasons (dealing with problems the Founders had never anticipated) the bill for evading the principles of the system have come due.
Interesting phrasing in your post; HPL’s and Kafka’s worlds do have a lot in common though, don’t they?
Read my post, The Mutation that Will Kill America for an explanation of how the Founders’ intent was perverted.
Thanks Maggie, for both your cogent writing and referring us to great writing offsite. I particularly liked the Burney Law piece and the essay from Liberty Unbound.
Regarding supposedly opposing parties electing sequential presidents who ran against their predecessor’s policies but maintained them or doubled down, the quintessential example is FDR following Herbert Hoover.
FDR specifically denounced Hoover’s hyper regulation and deficit spending. Yet when he was elected, he continued both to a degree that made Hoover’s essays into the field look paltry by comparison.
Re: Bush and Obama just one example. The Patriot Act was bad enough but not only did it get re-authorized by a majority of both parties but both parties supported the NDAA 2012 act that allowed indefinite detention without trial, with only the House Democrats splitting 93-93 aye-nay on the issue.
[…] Against Conscience, by Maggie McNeill […]
Those of us outside the US see a major problem with the Constitution: there is no mechanism whereby it can be updated. What was appropriate in the late 18th century no longer applies — and all the freedoms that have been won in the last 50 years or so have been gained through impressive, remarkable interpretations of it (pace Roe vs Wade).
The US Constitution has been updated numerous times. 27 times in fact, via the amendment process. The problem is that our government simply ignores it these days when it is convienient for it.
It’s been amended, certainly; but it needs to be rewritten for today’s circumstances.
I totally disagree; the problem is that is HAS been de facto rewritten many times over. Originally it sharply delineated the powers of government, which if observed would have prevented the exact mess we’re in. The next time a group of moral people get control over a country, the constitution they write will learn from America’s mistakes and make the restrictions on government power far more rigid.
I can’t pretend to be an expert on the US constitution, but I understood that the amendments were additions, extras, to the original: and that the design of the original was a response to the system of government in GB. That is, the powers of the executive were to be limited — in particular the what was seen as the influence of George III (and by extension, the President).
My view is informed by comparison with the constitution of Switzerland. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 imposed a constitution on the country which could not be changed. The tensions that this produced led to a civil war in the 1840s (the Sonderbundkreig); afterwards the victor and the vanquished sat together to produce a new constitution, one that could be and has been modified several times subsequently.
The constitution of 1848 introduced a federal parliament modelled on the US system, though not an exact copy: each Canton (“county”, the US equivalent of a state) sent representatives on a proportional basis to the lower house, and two “senators” to the upper house. The executive is drawn from members of parliament.
The Swiss legal system is codified after the Napoleonic system — but this can be updated as necessary. For example, until recently the Civil Code began “The man is the head of the household…” and went on to describe how he determined where the family lived; and if his wife wanted to work, she had to get his express permission. Today, it describes the family as a partnership of equals.
My point originally, referring to Roe vs Wade was that abortion was not thought of at the time writing the constitution, nor at the time of it’s amendment; rather it took a certain legal sleight of hand to establish abortion as being legal. And by extension, rather than having a constitution with whatever number of amendments, a new one, cognisant of today’s values should be adopted: but that the original does not permit this.
The constitution should not HAVE to say that abortion is legal; the power to restrict free people’s bodies and private activities is not granted to it in the Constitution, therefore the government has no right to control it.
Your understanding of the American Constitution is incorrect. It wasn’t created in reaction to the structure of England’s government. Its genesis was the failure of the Articles of Confederation to create a viable United States. However, its structure was a positive attempt at creating what we’d call a libertarian society tempered by practical political considerations (e.g., the sanctioning of slavery).
The design was not intended to limit the executive; it was informed by the proposition that no branch of government should be all powerful. Thus, each branch was intended to be able to thwart the others in some way, so that no branch could become despotic.
Nor were the amendments mere additions. Some, for example, changed basic aspects of the original design. The Bill of Rights was added to specifically limit, not add, to government powers. Prohibition of alcohol was added–and then removed–by the same amendment process.
In fact, the amendment process allows almost every part of the Constitution to be changed. There’s not a thing in it that forbids, for example, amendments that give citizens so-called positive rights (as in a right to a job).
As for Roe v Wade, that’s an example of how constitutional checks and balances work. Various governments thought that they could forbid abortion; the Supreme Court said the Constitution forbids them from doing so.
Furthermore, the Constitution is constantly “amended” to accord with today’s values. One of the clearest examples, is the Eighth Amendment (one of those in the Bill of Rights), which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Originally, that had a very limited reach, basically only forbidding outright torture. As society became more humane, that amendment has been reinterpreted require prisons to match society’s conception of humane behavior.
On the negative side, the Constitution has also been “amended” by reinterpreting it to give the government essentially unlimited powers (chiefly via the taxation clause and the commerce clause).
In sum, it’s futile to interpret the American Constitution by comparing it to other constitutions. They’re very different in structure and intent and in the way that they interact with society.
twwells wrote:
The Bill of Rights was added to specifically limit, not add, to government powers.
Hamilton, in Federalist 84 wrote the following:
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority, which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it, was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.
In analysis, I find that Hamilton was both right and wrong. He was right in that a plain reading of the Constitution – a document of enumerated powers – would say that any power not explicitly granted to the government was denied to it.
But SCOTUS, in Roe v. Wade, rather than indulging in a plain reading of the Constitution, which, as Maggie points out, “[grants no] power to restrict free people’s bodies and private activities,” prefers to fantasize about “emanations and penumbras” to reanimate our rights from the charnel yard of the Comstock Laws and in the process completely obscures the fundamental truth of the Constitution as a document of specifically limited government powers.
He was wrong in that absent that “plausible pretence for claiming [the] power” such men would not find some other pretense toward that end. And we would find ourselves today without even the paltry remnants of rights protected by specific mention in the Bill of Rights.
It is a gross display of ignorance by the supposed champions of “Constitutionalism” on the putative “Right” when they ask such inanities as, “Where in the Constitution do you find a right to privacy?” At such times, I would like to appear, magically, on their TV stage and proceed to hammer into their forehead in reversed lettering so they could read it in the mirror every morning…
What is it about a government of enumerated power that you fail to understand?
Here are some unfortunate truths.
The US built its fortune on three principles:
– Free land (taken from occupants and rapidly settled), unprecedented in modern history;
– Minimal government *ability* to interfere, given technology and population
– Protected industry: The US was actually extremely protectionist prior to the 1920’s.
– Financial system security
The free land was all used up. Once people became settled and deeply invested, it became easy to control them. Protectionist measures were dismantled (with good intentions, at first). And then the financial system turned into an unregulated casino.
Since the 1970′, America has seen its industrial base gutted. The ruling class cared not at all, because their own jobs were protected – they even profited. The lower and middle classes were butchered. Socialists welcome this because they want the lower classes angry. Marxists always decry the reform of the system: they want it gone, and replaced with total state control.
Technology has now become the plaything and future of the Asian nations; the US is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Our elites have totally betrayed us, and are likely to betray themselves in the process. This goes for both the “conservative” and “liberal” elites. Neither are worth the bread or meat they eat.
The US is finished. it’s beyond bankrupt. Cities are falling one by one. Race and ethnic relations are catastrophic in some areas. Literally swarms of foreigners are “immigrating” without much control; this is always the end of a society or state, with values that underlie people with common bonds.
Our once higher-trust society is actually under assault right now. We don’t see it. Many Romans didn’t see it as it was happening, either.
Very angry, very xenophobic, very nationalistic forces are angling to tear chuncks from the American corpse: Islamic states are now entrenching a viciously outsider-hating cult of death, not your nice Sufiism, all over the world, and even in the US; our allied cultures in Europe are more or less swimming in their own self-generated decay and can be counted on for absolutley nothing except weak-willed vacillation and internal collapse. Expect an Islamic state with aggressive anti-Muslim laws in places like France in the next 60 years. It’s almost unavoidable for some large sections of France alreadyl the rest of the country can’t be far behond. Europe is done.
In essence, the West is bankrupt, the US even moreso. Countries like Canada or Australia or NZ might fare better, and individual parts of the US might do reasonably well. Catalonia is looking to ditch Spain, and with good reason; Scotland the same with Britain, and they may just succeed.
We don’t know it, but we’re truly done.
The US is so financially bankrupt, how it will pay the bloated salarieas of its public employees or the ridiculous social obligations to its largely lazy, indolent people is beyond everyone.
Over 50% of Americans are sucking off welfare in one form or another. This is not positive redistribution: Evry penny given in welfare is another nail in the coffin, because all of this money – every last bit – is borrowed. It will never be repaid.
When the US financially collapses, it will be the greatest implosion of a state in history. it won’t happen all at once, it wil ljust decay until everything looks like Detroit, which is likely in the next 15-20 years, investment is difficult, capital is impossible to raise, and social unrest tears the country apart.
The smartest thing for successful regions to do would be to ditch the heaving behemoth now. Washington and Oregon should go their own way. New England should do the same. All of the US should just push California out of the Union: Its future is one of complete bankruptcy and total population replacement. Its left-wing politicians are utterly destroying the state. Hundreds of companies move out every month, not because they want to, but because they have to.
All of the evils that befall a large nation are hitting the US at once. predictably, the symptoms indicate that this process is going on now, not that it’s about to start. Police are becoming little more than armed thugs with their own armies, and the law is capricious and has nothing to do with liberty or communal self-protection. The elite are divorced entirely from the American reality, the left-wing elite at least as much as the right.
The smartest thing for a person with means or skills to do? Get the hell out of this stinking mess of a country and let it sink into its own self-generated hell. You can’t save people who are caught in multiple suicidal delusions.
History is about to rewrite wat the US is. Expect a left-right push for one or another version of dictatorship.
Already, the worship of Obama signals a complete change in the American approach to politics. The next Democratic contender is going to have to work up a personality cult.
I suspect the next contender will be a woman. She’ll be propped up as another saint. On the right, the plutocrats will just keep using the US as their perosnal financial fiefdom, partitioning it into spheres of interest.
it’s always on the edge of empires that the people survive and do well. From the British Empire, the US, Canada, Australia, NZ; under Rome, the Byzantine sphere, the western European areas on the edges, far from the main conflicts (the Middle Ages weren’t all dark), Asia outside the collapsing Chinese states.
As sentimental as we want to be about the US, as loyal as we want to be, it is no longer a state or society that deserves loyalty from its citizens. It fails to protect us; in fact, it’s a net negative. The state gives us nothing except that which it steals from us.
Some people are afraid of ethnic violence or war. Alas, the US is unsalvageable. It needs to be allowed to die.
Fighting it will only engage its wrath, and a dying predator can inflict a lot of damage. The best thing to do:
– Withdraw interest.
– Withdraw effort, labor or money.
– Withdraw support. Hunker down somewhere the state can’t get you.
– Don’t have property that it can take.
– Ignore it whenever possible; treat it as an evil invading army or powerful force of nature otherwise, something to be avoided and protected against
– Don’t incur its wrath. Get away.
I make sure I have other options than staying in the US.
Get another passport. Get out.
Don’t have kids. Investing in this society is madness. Let other fools do it. If you do have kids, make sure they’re raised elsewhere and can renounce any potential American citizenship if necessary.
In 200 years, the descendants of today’s Americans will be small in number, reduced to likely irrelevancy in their own country, and the country will be nothing like it is today: likely a technocratic series of states whose future is controlled from elsewhere, largely because it’s incapable of governing itself.
This is the future of the US.
Get out.
Hi Gorbachev,
An interesting point that this article at the economist illuminates is that between the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and deflation, the 1930’s saw tariff rates that were the highest since 1830. Of course the other stuff that Hoover and FDR did had a larger effect, but restraining trade did add its mite to the decline.
Though I haven’t commented in a while, I regularly read your column. While most of the time I nod in agreement, and go on about my day, I felt compelled to respond to this one, if only to say one simple thing. Isn’t amazing how closely this column reflects the supposed statements of Christ. (No, I am not a religious fundamentalist or a bible thumper). I just mean that in essence, a large part of Jesus’ teachings revolved around, ‘Do what the government asks, provided that it doesn’t conflict with the greater morals of your conscience.’
Thanks for another very interesting column.
Chapeau, Maggie, for your admirable Philippic! You’re the hammer to hit the nail on its head. Pure gold. Thanks also for reviving Havel’s 1978 essay, which has for me so many old emotional memories attached to it, and for introducing Payne’s equally powerful “Civil Noncompliance”. What a day!
Very much my pleasure, especially when the essay has evoked such wonderful compliments! 🙂
It can be stopped by elections if Americans started voting for the guys who would crash the system the quickest and most completely.
It has to be torn down – or rather I’d just prefer it all to crash down. To “tear” it down assumes some kind of violent revolution – which I’m not for. But a crash down forces some sanity and certainly it forces rebuilding.
This is why I’m voting for Obama. No one can spend money like Obama – and faith in government has eroded even quicker under Obama. The US federal government has become a “clown car” of hilarity that no one respects.
More please.
Actually, as you will see in one of my links this Sunday, federal spending tends to increase under Republican presidencies while the Democratic presidencies tend to “lock in” the spending and make it essentially impossible to reverse. It’s a one-two bipartisan punch.
Sounds like the regulatory “ratchet” that Margaret Thatcher described but with the party roles reversed.
Hi. Greetings from me, the jerk who always has to point out that every generation believes itself to be living in the End Times.
Assuming that there must eventually be an End Times, eventually one generation will be right, but that will only be luck.
So true.
I think that you might find this blogpost of interest in regard to how the parable of “Chicken Little” has changed over time from when America was a majority rural country to the majority urbanization of today.
An excerpt:
The “ladies”—as the Engineering Geek calls them–are used to us, and to their hanging waterer, but whenever a shadow passes overhead, they immediately huddle under the raised chicken door to their coop and become very quiet. Once the threat passes, they go back to their clucking and eating, but with a watchful eye toward the sky, where a hawk or eagle might swoop down and take them for dinner. Drops of rain, or even vegetable scraps pitched into the chicken tractor sends them scurrying under shelter, even though the chicken wire top on the chicken tractor prevents any predator from entering. “The sky is falling!” the EG jokes, as they run for cover and grow silent.
Those of us of a certain age remember those classic animal fables from our childhood, The Little Red Hen, Chicken Little, the Ant and the Grasshopper. All of them were intended to teach a moral lesson: how those who work have earned the fruit of their labor, why one drop of rain does not a deluge make, and why it is important to plan for the future in the present. These tales inculcate and strengthen classic American virtues: hard work, common sense, and being prepared for the inevitable tough seasons.
But in watching my Americanas, I have come to reconsider how the tale of Chicken Little is understood by the newer generations of American children, if they have heard it at all. For some American children today are being raised almost as hot-house children, protected from every bump, bruise or danger while simultaneously being given the sense of enormous entitlement, so that they grow up with little experience of how to handle deprivation, danger and fear. For these privileged children, does the story of Chicken Little resonate differently than for those raised on the farm, or in the “duck and cover” era of the Cold War?
I think so, because twice last week I saw Jewish Libertarians insulted and ridiculed for pointing out the dangers of ignoring and appeasing the new, virulent anti-Semitism coming simultaneously from the left and from the Islamists of the world. In one case, several of them were called “Chicken Littles” and their concerns were ridiculed as if they were constantly running around proclaiming that “the sky is falling!”
A farm kid growing up in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s was aware of the context of the story of Chicken Little in ways that citified American children of privilege are not. When hearing the story of Chicken Little, the farm kid understood that there is really danger out there in the sky for little chickens, and that there can be real reasons for a chicken to run for cover and grow silent when the shadow of the hawk passes over the feather pen. In this context, the story is a warning not to invent danger where there is none, and not to develop fears that are out of proportion to the evidence. The story was not meant to teach children to close their eyes to real danger, it was meant to teach them not to create conspiracy theories just because there is evidence of danger.
But in the present context, in which privileged city children are protected from even the intimation of danger, the story has morphed into one that teaches that there is no reason to take cover, or to be prepared for danger, and that the watchmen on the walls are crazy and ought to shut up. It is as if the story is meant to say, “Do not disturb my illusions. Let me continue to evade the reality of the hawk.” And yet the hawk is out there, as is the owl, and so it is important for little chickens to pay attention to the shadows passing over them. However, it is equally important not to invent evidence of danger that does not exist.
Thank you. This is indeed a new take on a story I’ve grown to hate over the years. Considering how often I find myself subjected to the damned thing, it’s nice to get another take on it.
Whenever somebody tries to warn of some danger which would require any change to the status quo, the warner is immediately dismissed as “Chicken Little,” and his warnings as “the sky is falling.” This is particularly true of any environmental warning. It’s like a magic spell: no facts or evidence carry any weight once the Feathered One and her pale blue doomsday goof are invoked.
It’s enough to make me wish that the original story had ended with Ms. Little’s naysayers getting clonked in the head with a good heavy chunk of sky.
I’ve also suggested that perhaps they simply misheard her. That what actually happened when she looked up was that she saw a man falling out of a hot air balloon. She tried to warn the others, crying out, “This guy is falling! This guy is falling!” But they misheard her, laughed, and ignored her warning. And all got squashed like so many bugs when a man the size of a basketball-playing sumo wrestler landed on them.
Nice knowing ya, jerks.
Well written article which is sadly true. Too bad the sheeple in this country don’t have the balls to stop it.
To me there’s a very, very simple solution: don’t be attached to the things of this world, like a retard unable to look ahead might be, and don’t have kids, like a retard unable to look ahead might do.
Considering that today is in many ways the best time to be alive in all of recorded history, and that the future looks to be only better, it seems a shame to leave it to retards and their descendants alone.
Over the past one hundred years life expectancy has doubled, infant mortality is a percent or less of what it was then, and global literacy has gone from just over 25% to over 80%. Violent crime is lower in most countries than it has been in decades (in the US, lower than ever recorded). Among the young (who will of course determine what the future is like) unwanted pregnancy, drug overdoses, and violent crime are even lower. Again, historic lows.
For various reasons, I don’t have any kids. But my nieces and nephews stand to inherit a world my aunts and uncles could hardly dream of.
We hear mostly bad news (if it bleeds it leads), but take a look at this.
[…] government by nobody; no matter who holds power at any given time, the whole amounts to a colossal, blind, amorphous entity whose only purpose is to grow and increase its grip on everything in its reach, especially […]
Why, Maggie McNiell, your cthonic tentacles are showing, peeking out at me!
Wait, are you … beckoning me with that thing, you rebel, you? ❤😈